Dec 23, 2013

Another beautiful day in the garden! A nice group of volunteers showed up and accomplished a great deal : Babette, Doug, Laurie, Leonie, Alice, Linda, Sue J, Sue B. Sharon stopped by to give us an injured rooster and we willingly offered it sanctuary. 

The chickens love the sight of Leonie now. She brings them a bucket of kitchen waste and they go nuts over it. The chickens are in love! Well maybe not with Leonie, but surely with her garbage. 

Speaking over chickens, we have sold a number of of excess birds that we no longer need. Over the next few weeks we plan to thin out the flock, bringing it down to our best layers. Less is better. 

Another large section of the garden was thoroughly dug and totally de-grassed. That's a major accomplishment! And the old sweet potato bed is now being tackled so that part of it can go back into production again. 

Quite a large pile of grass roots. We have to move all this grass debris away from the garden, otherwise it just sprouts roots and keeps on growing. Great stuff for pastures, but a nightmare in a vegetable garden. 

The beds cleared out of old plants and invading grass. It looks really nice! We have started defining the rows so that we have a good visual boundaries. Staying organized has been difficult for our group, so having things better defined should improve the garden. 

Looking the other direction, you can see the difference that the white row markers make. By using moveable markers, we will be able to apply mulch without losing sight if them. Simply pick them up and lay them back down atop the mulch. What a nifty system. 

Today lots of the garden got sorted out. Lots of digging and weeding. Lots of reclaiming of the overgrown areas. Everyone worked steady all morning. 

This is one of our crazy collard plants. We've never grown collards before so we didn't know what to expect. Like the kale, it just seems to keep growing and growing. A few us have been experimenting cooking with collards and have found it to be tasty but chewer than cabbage. It works fine in soups, stews, and stir fries. So far no one has mentioned that they have tried it as a stand alone green. 

The first keyhole garden is producing really, really well. We have already been harvesting all sorts of things including bok choy, peas, radishes, daikon, and cabbage greens. Remember, this is all with ZERO store bought fertilizer. This shows that one can indeed produce food without having to spend cash. This keyhole cost us nothing to create, just our labor and ingenious use of decarded items. Plus of course the organic material to fill it. The daikon pictured above is growing great, as are the rest of what was planted in the keyhole. 

Another good example of growing food without spending lots of cash is the creation of the pea trellises out of sticks. These are coffee tree trimmings, discarded by the local coffee growers. Because they have little branches poking this way and that, the pea vines readily climb them. Just use some string (saved from feed bags) or wire (salvaged from an assortment of discarded trash) or even a hunk of twisted coarse grass to tie 4 together. Splay them out and shove them into place. Wallah! Instant pea trellis. They work, they are simple, and they are easily replaced with each new crop if need be.  

Hands working together. Here is a set of wind chimes being restrung. Definitely a two person effort. Chimes are so pleasant to listen to, plus they help in the bird chasing department. 

Babette is leading our effort to become better organized. Not just defining the physical garden with row markers, but getting garden plans down on paper. A nice plot plan that we can all refer to and add changes to. Plus we will keep a book, a journal, so that workers can write down observations, make comments, keep notes as to when things were planted. 

Lunch:

Herb seasoned rice

Sautéed green beans with sweet peppers

Steamed beets

Fried potatoes with spring onion, garlic chives, and sweet pepper

Veggie stir fry (just the right dish to use that one carrot, one small squash, one baby bok choy, plus other little things. Amazing what you can do when you only have one of each item!)

Dec 16, 2013

Finally a chance to garden again as a group! The rain has been quite frequent the past couple weeks, though never a steady downpour. But it's been enough to keep the soil moist and the plants get fully wet daily. This has helped some of the veggies (and grass!) but damaged others. Seedlings suffered the worse, with most of them dying. The frequent moisture and cool temperatures allowed mildew to establish itself on the kale. But luckily much of the garden is fine. 

Doug and Laurie are back. Hurrah! All that grass below Doug's feet magically disappeared and a garden was revealed! 

Lots of work was accomplished today, with all the volunteers seemingly happy to be back at work. Large sections of the garden were dug. Piles of invading grass removed. Old plants taken out. New seedlings transplanted. Seeds sown. Row markers set in place. It's much easier to visualize the garden with the white markers in place. 

Harvesting started with some beans but before you knew it, a pile of veggies had built up. Daikons, golden turnips, Spanish black radish, bok choy, carrots, broccoli, collards, sweet potatoes, oranges. 

Lots of other stuff in the garden, but they get picked as volunteers want them since they are either delicate or not overly abundant -- arugula, yacon, snap peas, kale, chard, herbs. 

(Above- a big harvest pile is growing.) 

Today was the start of the new season. Lots of onion plants and seed potatoes got into the ground. Several new crops got seeded or transplanted into place. 

We're getting the garden reorganized. The rows and beds have been widened from 2 foot to 3 feet. And markers are gradually getting into place. Over lunch we discussed having a garden plan of some sort. We're coming up with ideas to make this better organized and easier for everyone. 

The greenhouse suffered badly in the rain, so there's a lot of work to do getting it cleaned up. As you can see, the plain plastic has shredded due to the sun. So we plan to use greenhouse plastic next time. 

Yes, we are getting a few avocados today. The tree doesn't have many, but the ones it has are large and good tasting this year. Not enough to sell but just enough to share among the volunteers. 

Lunch today-

Spagetti with homemade sauces 

......meat sauce using Michelle Galimba's grass fed local beef

......vegan style using a wide assortment of our own veggies and herbs

Fresh homemade bread from the Naystation 

December 9, 2013

Rained out.

December 2, 2013

Rained out.